Friday, November 14, 2008

38 years

This is about how long it would take the GDP per capita of Mauritius to reach that of Singapore. Indeed the USD 5,496 figure we clocked last year would attain Singapore's 2007 performance of USD 35,163 if it grew steadily at 5% until 2046.

But this assumes that the incredible south-east Asian tiger would stop growing for the next four decades and wait for us to catch up. A very unlikely event considering that since Sithanen joined politics, Singapore has been growing at 6.5% on average every year vs. our own 5.0%. Singapore's GDP per capita number is already better than those of Spain and Japan and should match Germany's before Brazil hosts the World Cup in 2014.